Transcripts For CSPAN2 Yancey Strickler This Could Be Our Future 20240713

Good evening everyone i am president and ceo we are happy you are here tonight we have a very special event and we officially kicked off the foundation for entrepreneurship earlier this year to be possible by the dedication of the generosity of the foundation to provide the next generation of entrepreneurs of mentorship and guidance through a variety of fields and programming geared towards programming a deeper understanding of innovation and entrepreneurship. This Initiative Includes the entrepreneur in Residence Program that provides workshop and a public Speaker Series recognizes entrepreneurs like nancy are students and team members are given the tools to succeed is really at the core of our mission and this helps us to connect these entrepreneurs with professionals to help inspire those on their journey some of our team members are here this morning and fortunately sheridan cannot be here with us tonight we are thrilled to include him as part of the Initiative Initiative and is best known as the cofounder and chief which is a software and it Consulting Firm and it is the inspiration of the business that he runs with the influence on culture of every infectious personality before we interview our speaker but nancy was featured on season two and already in season six i dont know if you remember back that far but this is pretty cool to watch because its been four years and we made a lot of progress. There is no i in team. It takes a village. It seems to be tossed around a lot these days in the last two years and to help launch innovators. The online social fundraising the fundraising to use Online Fundraising platforms and then becomes visible to people worldwide and anyone can get support. Without question the most wellknown are kick starter and indeed go go. In new york i met up with the founder of kick starter starting the company in 2009 since then more than 2 billion for 100,000 projects. After launching and said if you give me five dollars i will draw you a picture and then there was 35. Since then there are rules about what can be on kick starter they cannot pay for their rent or buy groceries this is for people making something new. Confidence in june to kickstart future startups. That is pretty cool being a nonprofit that is cool to have something fun we are so happy to have nancy with us tonight the first book this could be our future manifesto and to be available to purchase signing copies. Thank you to Nancy Strickler cap [applause] thanks for being so kind and welcome today. What an amazing place. Would like to start by asking you to picture your commute to work you walk out of your house write a bike, 30 minutes to one hour later you get to the office. Now think back what stores do you see on the righthand side of the road cracks we live in a residential area on the right hand side you will see coffee shops and banks and gas stations on the way to work the things that you need in the morning from the office back to neighborhood on the righthand side you will see restaurants and Shopping Centers and Grocery Stores and the things you need after work that is called the no left turn rule. It is very simple its way easier to turn right to they are left if you turn left its oncoming traffic it is more dangerous to go as the default the no left turn rule is structured even Shopping Centers in her neighborhood. But what we call a hidden default the way the choices are made without us being aware. This sounds like a bad thing but it doesnt have to be. One example is Organ Donation rates. And without the afterlife in reality what kind of form you have to fill out almost everybody chooses to donate their organs if you have to manually decide very few people do it and we tend to go along with the default whatever that happens to be. It has never been less than 70 or 80 percent reelected every year. If you show the Approval Rating over the same time it has gone down. When 11 percent of Approval Rating but those number one members were reelected we go along with the default whatever it happens to be. A 15 minute walk of the same corner. As someone who lived in the neighborhood i was so confused was there a virus infecting storefronts overnight turning them into banks . How does this make sense . Added up researching this to discover this is not just happening to my neighborhood, across all of new york city a number of Bank Branches skyrocketed in the 2000 and 2000 teens. Up 1000 Bank Branches in 10 years. So the atm as if it were never invented. I realize when i saw every one of these Bank Branches it wasnt just the bank i was seeing i was also seeing what had once been a small business. New yorkers serving fellow new yorkers. Those places were being pushed away because of change. Today in new york city theres almost as many subway stations as there are subway restaurants. After there being no chains in new york up until the 1990s the city had been remade by them in the Lower Eastside now has the highest concentration of chain stores and the whole city. This is not just an urban story, the growth in chains has happened in suburbia suburban areas or rural areas like ran from. Walmart bigbox stores push smaller businesses out because they cant compete with Selection Convenience or prices they offer. But while this has been happening we been told a story about this being this glory age of entrepreneurship everyone is disrupting or being disrupted but if you actually look at the data it isnt true. Since 1977 the entrepreneurship rate in america adjusted per capita has dropped in half. The same decline as the decline in smoking rates over the same time span. If you think about how many more people used to smoke in the 1970s then today come out similarly greater proportion of people used to be on to paris. Used to start their own businesses. Now they dont, they cant because they are blocked out by bigger competitors. The default, the while this is happening is that he same hidden default making every movie thats sequel or remake of something made before. This is something we are imagining. You can actually chart out the number of movie prequel sequels and remix by year and you can see on the left side of the wrap it was hollywood was telling new stories in the past 30 years as one hollywood realized it was way more profitable to retell a story it already told before. Over the last five years the top 10 movies in the back box office every year are remix of something thats been made before. The past summer the center foxs work filled with nothing but sequels. Nothing but movies that had already run in the past. The same reason why this is happening is the same reason why taylor swift is on the cover of every magazine. At hidden default i call financial methylation. ai should believe that rational choice in any decision is whichever option makes the most money. This is the hidden default setting thats running our world. I can imagine that you might think, is this really a new thing . Isnt this just what capitalism is . In 1776 adam awrote in a well adaptation is not from the benevolence of the bush and that we expect to be fed but for the regards of their own self interest. He was saying a world where people were trusted to look out for what was best for them could function and even be a preferable way to operate things. On this front hes absolutely right. But adam smith did not go on to say that that busher must maximize their hogs lottery lower Safety Standards to a minimum and pay workers as little as possible to redistribute those profits to investors and said. Thats a Standard Operating Procedure for businesses today. We can pinpoint the moment when it happened when the switch began the end of the 1960s the United States were admired in the aba National Conversation that said young men are sacrificing their lives in vietnam their families are sacrificing on their behalf, what should companies be doing for the greater good . What kind of social responsibility they have . Into this debate stepped up very influential economist named Milton Friedman and he wrote an essay in the New York Times in 1970 said the idea that businesses have social responsibility putting in skeptical quote marks 23 times in the essay the idea that businesses have any social responsibility is absurd. Only people can have responsibility businesses arent people and furthermore, businesses already have a goal they have to fulfill. Thats to make as much money for their shareholders as possible. This today sounds like a very normal way of thinking but this is the new idea New York Times was presenting it as a big name making a new argument. Friedman was saying that businesses core constituency wasnt there police, wasnt the customers, wasnt the community that surrounded them it was the investors the people that put up the money. Once the switch happened the way business operated began to change. From 1948 to 1973 in the United States the wages of the average American Worker grew by more than 90 and the lowest paid worker that got the biggest raises of all. Starting in 1973 this change. Even though the productivity of workers continue to go up in the same rate they are paid did not. Since 1973 and justice for inflation the average American Workers pay has gone by about 10 this means that the high point for pay for the American Worker for the productivity was 1973 the same year pink floyd dark side of the moon came out. That was a long time ago. You might add, if workers had only got 10 raise in 50 years how did i world even function. That doesnt seem to add up. This is the crazy thing. At the same moment families stop getting raises, and new savior appeared call the credit card. Up until the end of the 1960s there were zero Credit Card Debt in america. It just wasnt how things were done. People got paid well enough to sustain their lifestyles. Once the pay raises stopped, people started turning to plastic instead. You can actually grab our Credit Card Debt by year and he could see a missing gap of pay it got turned into debt. Workers stop getting raises and started getting credit cards instead. If you think of this from people who have money on the top this makes perfect sense. Why give people raises when you can make them borrow the money with interest. Its the more financially maximizing choice. Thats what will grow the capital base over time. And now American Workers are trapped in 1 trillion of debt and without real raises in a long time. My favorite place where you can see the switch to financial mathematics nation comes in a study that ucla has been doing for 50 years. Im sorry, let me start that over, when i picture their macro effects of whats happening here, the change in pay theres an image that comes to my mind im sure the same energy were all thinking about it is of course the mullet. The mullet was the pinnacle of 80s here technology. Business in the front, party in the back. Modularity everything you need. What we are living through now is the mullen economy, for workers for 90 of people its business in front with decades of wage freezes, layoffs, more job insecurities and workers that have decades but for the top 1 to 10 it is a party in the back with stock buybacks, ceo bonuses and the same time the marriage average American Workers pay is 10 , the average american executive pay has grown a thousand percent. This gap in inequality thats happened over the last 40 years, this is the mullet. One groups earnings get caught in another group has a long luscious mullet growing down the back. Another place you can see the evidence of this switch to financial maximization comes in a study ucla has been doing the past 50 years. Students are given about 15 different choices to either say essential, very important, kind of important or nonessential. Theres one of these questions that has to do with money being very well off financially. In 1970 the percentage of Incoming College freshmen who said being rich was essential or very important which is 28 percent just 28 percent of students said it was essential or very important. Number one afor students that year was develop meaningful philosophy on life. 86 percent of College Freshmen said it was essential or very important. The last year of the survey came out 2017 the percentage of Incoming College freshmen said being rich was essential or very important, 82 percent. The present as you say developing meaningful philosophy on life about 40 . But we can see what happens in 1970, 86 percent of students were looking for their meaning and today the same number of students know what their meaning is its to be rich. I dont think this is an example of millennial selfishness or grieve, i think there being practical. Right now in america, 43 percent of people cant afford their bills every month. A lot of these are college graduates. Of all the student debt outstanding, about half as delinquent or in forbearance. College students graduating now are merely trapped by the mullet economy. The cost of college increase 19 times since 1970 wages have grown by 10 . They are leaving school with massive amounts of debt. Of course they want to be wealthy its the only way they can imagine escaping where they are. If you look at business practice you can see the kind of mentality of our age look at the language on these covers, on the world, be paranoid, go to war for talent, this is not language about making a great product or building a great a this is language of violence and conquest and war. This is language that is teaching us how to play the game, the goal is it to cooperate, its to win. Its to take down somebody else. I was ceo of kick starter i remember standing in the checkout line at the Grocery Store when this magazine caught my eye. As a ceo you are never not worrying. You go to sleep to dream new things to worry about. Youre just constantly anxious about everything. Still when i saw this magazine cover and this language, be paranoid, go to war, disrupt yourself, i thought maybe thats my problem. Maybe im not paranoid enough. But this magazine, cofounder of a Successful Company about this magazine because it spoke to the fear that i had in me that i was wrong that this would tell me the answers. This magazine sat on my pocket abcoffee table for several days before had the guts to open it. You have to be ready for Something Like this. In the end the article was an essay by two consultants about how to increase profit margin. Just the same old story. This language touch this nerve that told me that what i was doing, how i thought about the world was all wrong and i needed to be like Something Like this instead. When i picture what financial a looks like thursday a symbol that comes to mind, like what and Silicon Valley is called the hockey stick graph. A chart where whatever your selfinterest is, units sold its going so fast the wind slows up into the right. This we think is the pinnacle of making it. But when you really look at this graph you can see that its actually just a smalls life a much Bigger Picture because the measuring time it keeps going from now into the future. From representing our self interest also keeps growing from me to us. The difference between single and having a family is enormous. Even solo and entrepreneur changes how you think. We can actually mark off four different spaces of our self interest we should really be thinking about. Its not just this now me space at the bottom lefthand corner with a hockey stat graph lives. What we want and need right now what i want is also future needs, the older gray or wrinkle version of myself that wants to live the life of the obituary that i wish to have. It is also in the top left, now us, to give that to people who i rely on and who rely on me. My family my friends my coworkers my neighbors. Finally, in the top right theres future us. Our children and everybody elses children too. Every decision we make impacts all of these bases we have footprints everywhere. All of these bases are in our rational self interest but today we believe only this now me space were hockey stick graphs are real this is the space where financial whats interesting about a bento boxes has a number of compartments which lets you carry a variety of dishes. The bento always offers balanced meal not too much of any one thing. The bento also honors japanese dieting philosophy which says the goal of the meal is to be 80 full, that way you are still hungry for tomorrow. I want to show you how the bento works. To do that i want to talk about the movie pulp fiction. In pulp fiction bruce willis plays an aging boxer named butch. He has one last fight in him which he juries to throw to the mob. At the last second bush doesnt do it he wins the fight, jumps up out the window and escape to a hotel room where his lever is waiting for him. The just about to go on the run when bush discovers they forgot to pack his gold watch. Not just any gold watch, his dad war hero fathers gold watch. The same gold watch that Christopher Watkins memorably describes hiding in a very uncomfortable place early in the movie. Despite the fact that gangsters are almost certainly waiting for him at his house butch decides to go back and get it. The question i want to ask, and from their experiences as he later says the single weirdest day of his life but the question i like to ask is, would butchs decision rational . Asking whether something in it will be as rational as absurd already a tarantino movie especially. But this is actually an interesting question to answer because the way we define rational behavior today is largely based on a school of thought called game theory. Game theory was developed in the Rand Corporation a part of the Defense Department at the start of the cold war. A way for the mathematicians and scientists they are to study what the United States should do in the face of the nuclear age. In the way game theory works is it creates real life interactions and mathematical models that let you see all the implications of the decision. If we do x they will do why and they do see and it lets you play things out. A lot of these situations are done in real interactive games, the most famous of which is called abthis is where you and a friend have been arrested for robbing a bank. The cops put you in separate interrogations rooms and offer you the same deal. Rat out your friend you will go free they will go to jail for three years but your friend is getting offered the same deal. You both ran each other years and both go to jail for two years . You both faced silence he both go to where, jail for one year. Its your job to figure out what to do. The overall lesson of game theory is that the rational choice and a decision is to maximize your own self interest. That would be ideal ideally working towards, the question is how are you going to get there . It leads to a lot of counterintuitive conclusions. In the case of remitters dilemma where the values might encourage us to be loyal to our partner we just robbed the bank together after all. To be loyal and show honesty and honor and integrity. The lesson according to game theory is the rational thing to do is to rat out your friends. Its the only way you can go free this is the option that best maximizes your personal outcome. Is that what butch is doing . Is bush making a rational decision where he is maximizing his own outcome . I would say no. I would think it is doing that butch would go by another launch but this is not what butch does. Before disregarding this as just hollywood silliness, i forgot my phone to do the next part. Can you grab it . I didnt think this through. To be without distraction. I think its in my gray coat. How are yall doing right now . [laughter] this is real. Its like being on a plane. There is a scene in pulp fiction where he didnt make the final cut is in the original shooting script of the movie and butch is standing outside his house trying to decide what to do and then he has this monologue. I might be able to remember it. I feel weird going off stage. There it is. We could just imagine, thank you. Imagine im bruce willis. Obviously. Butch is standing outside. This is a punchy move and i eat punchy. Daddy would totally understand if he was here right now he would say butch get a grip. Its a watch man come you lose one you get another. This is your life youre messing around with which you shouldnt be doing because you only got one. He is silent, dead. But this is my war. You see butch, what you forgotten is this watch isnt just a device that enables you to keep track of time come this march is a symbol, a symbol of how your father and his father beforehand and his father beforehand distinguish themselves in war, in fact, if you look at it that way, it is almost abfabienne left it behind you think that respect going back is stupid and might be dangerous but its not stupid because there are certain things in this world that are worth going back for. We can imagine butch sitting here ed who looks at his bento commode butch asked, should i go back to the watch . In the monologue we can hear each of these distinct voices answer him. There is the now me voice it says i dont want to die, leave get out of here. There is the now up voice think of fabienne, this is stupid we should go. Then he starts to access these larger values and thinks of the future me, this watch is a symbol, not just to watch. And finally, arrives at what is most coherent from him but actually to live up to my familys legacy i have to go back a chance for me to prove myself. By following his bento and looking at this wider view of the self interest butch makes a soft coherent choice in line with his values, gets the watch and lives to see another day. Our self interest is not just this now me space where hockey sticks live. Its a whole universe of spaces for us come abfor us to consider. Imagine a smoker asking their bento whether they should quit smoking . The now us voice thinks of their family, i should quit of course, their future us voice is one of my kids smokes because of me we of course you should quit. Your future me says i want there to be a future me, lets quit right now. But the smoker is now me voice it set to keep smoking and for rational reasons. Quitting is going to suck but the now me is addicted to nicotine who would choose to go through such pain if they had a choice. This is a hard voice to reason with because a rational perspective based on a very limited way of seeing things the hard voice to argue with. Another example imagine a switch to fossil fuels. For now us our future us our future me voices say its the right thing to do but the now us voice says this is too inconvenient its too difficult were not ready for this. That is mainly where energy is focused we wanted to try to solve the challenge of the climate price why do that by trying to increase our now me self interest is not to work that way. The now me spaces where financial mathimization lives but other values are there. I want to give you four examples of different ways to approach this. The first is patagonia. Patagonia the outdoor amaker and a Public Benefit corporation. The Public Benefit charter says patagonia develops new technology that can help the environment this is something that patagonia did in 2013 develops a new type of sustainable bio rubber to be used for wet suits. They immediately gave it away to our all their competitors. You might say this is a pr stunt but its a rational choice of optimizing purchase sustainability. Another example is chickfila. Chickfila is the only major chain in america that still closed on sundays. This cost chickfila billion dollars a year in sales. However, chickfila still closes on that day because the optimizing for tradition and community. Theyre not doing this every day just one day a week. Six days out of the week chickfila is a company just like any other but on one day of the week they have a different set of values that they choose to optimize for its totally rational according to how they see the world. My favorite example is adele in 2014 the Popstar Adele went on tour and when adele goes on to her she has this problem of her tickets immediately selling out and going on secondary marketing ticket websites for hundreds or thousands of dollars more. This meant adele was playing for wealthy fans or less wealthy fans that were probably spending more than they could afford to see her play. Rather than go along with this adele has gone to startups that built an algorithm that would measure how loyal a fan was to an artist. They use the algorithm to identify the top 30 tile adele fans in each market and especially invite them to buy tickets not putting restrictions on whether they could resell them or not but the idea was that by maximizing for another value in this case fairness and loyalty they would produce a better outcome and it was true, less than two percent of the tickets ended up being resold versus 10 or 20 times that for other shows. They saved her fans millions of dollars and adele put on a tour that was so profitable, so sustainable that was really optimizing for fairness in our communities instead. Hes thinking of the future me go a master. Kick starter can be thought about in the same way, and 2014 2015 kickstarter became a Public Benefit Corporation Like patagonia where we drafted a charter saying all kickstarter decisions must balance the interest of shareholders of financially maximizing obligations the company was producing a positive benefit for society. These things must be onetoone in a core part of our decisionmaking. In the beginning we thought about kick started this way, in fact, one of the secrets of the platform is that the money that was going into kick starter projects had no hope of financial upside kick starter pledges arent investments you just supporting ideas that you want to see exist. Kick starter is not a platform for financial maximization, its a platform for creative maximization. What kind of ideas do have what kind of people can you get excited about them. By changing the way to create a project may exist a whole diverse universe of projects has been created. Multiple oscarwinning movies funded to kick starter, the card game cards against humanity began as a kick starter projects of a few a few hundred backers. Neil armstrong spacesuit was restored by the smithsonian. One of my favorite projects was of the project by father and daughter in atlanta that wanted to conduct a census of all the squirrels in the park. This raised about 2500 and they went on to document the 80 some squirrels that live there. You can imagine trying to pitch this idea to an investor and probably not getting very far. Universe like kick starter well or ideas are funded simple because they want them to become a project like this is possible. Kickstarter optimizing for purpose and all parts of the bento is a public good recuperation. These are all examples of way that people and companies are just capturing value for themselves but creating it. Theyre supplying further now needs and making sure they run in the black with that they have what they need today and they are leaving the room for tomorrow and others as well and i think its part of what makes them successful. The way that we think about value is such a limited way of seeing things. We only see financial values irrational values but in reality, the world of value is much larger than that. I believe the opportunity we have now at this point is to expand our understanding of value where as the past 50 years weve solemnly seen things according to the lens of financial value i believe the coming decades will see us turn other kinds of moral values into more rational values. All the things you see on the column of the right are things we will eventually learn to appreciate how important they are to deeply integrate them into our decisionmaking for them to have equal seat at the table along with financial concerns and potentially for these to be things we measure and optimize for the same way do we do money today. The good news is that we are not starting from zero. A few months ago the Business Roundtable which is made up of the 200 Largest Companies in america announced a change to what corporations should be held, what expectations corporation should be held to whereas in the past, companies have been asked to solely maximize shareholder value in the financial maximization way. Ha these rhetorical changes have a lot of influence and have a lot of meaning and i think its the future of where business is going. I would like to end by thinking about how you can practically use the bento. The bento box isnt just a way of seeing its also a tool for making decisions, most importantly i think a tool for finding so abself coherence. When i made the bento i wrote down the question in each box to get to the heart of what its about. You are now me is about what i want and need, future me, the old version of yourself tell you is important. You are now us, about what did the people around me need. What i owe them what they owe me . The future us, what kind of world are leaving for my children. I ended up brainstorming and writing down everything i could think of in each of these spaces. What i want and need . I need good health, i need money in the bank, money is important to course. I want to be selfaware want to have meaning in my life. What is my future me about . My future me is about not selling out, living up to my values, creating harmony in the world around me. My now us is about deep time, focus time with friends and family. He i tried to shorten this and coming down to a simple phrase i could remember for each bento a way to guide my choices. My now me is about showing people the matrix, showing the systems that underlie the world around us making the unseen the easier to see. My future me has help me to not sell out and create harmony and look for ways to bring ideas together to bring people together. My now us is about the time focus with a small group of family and friends in my future us and walked a better matrix, i want to have a system that really works for us. For the past year plus ive used the bento to mix almost every decision to give you an example what really changed about how i thought about things, my bento is something that is the home screen on my phone it sits next to my desk in my office. Anywhere where magazines tell me to disrupt myself and couple to have a reminder of who actually am. Ive use this to make decisions and an example of the way the bento really changed my mindset was asking whether i should do a talk for a Company Whose values i dont feel aligned with. I will get asked to speak at organizations and sometimes it will be places that i dont fully agree with you dont feel comfortable with. While writing this book and thinking about bento wisdom one of these opportunities came in the past i always said no to these things. My dont sell out voice was really loud i would get irrationally angry about it. Instead i asked the bento, i was very surprised when i found. My now me voice that wants to show people the matrix said yes you should do the talk of course is what you are about my now us voice about the time says that our to have to share ideas with other people like what could be better . My future us and wants to build a better matrix says these people have a huge influence on what that world should be. Its exactly who should talk to. This is an honor and a privilege but then i got to the future me voice that told me to not sell out and that boy said no. That boy said dont do the talk. What he really in this for . A question my motives. As i looked at this and put that voice in context, i had this lightbulb moment realizing that future me voice of not selling out was like a bouncer standing outside the door. It was protecting me, it was protecting my values but i had the right to tap them on the shoulder and say thats cool what this one in. So here i was able to really listen and honor all these different parts of myself and try to make a choice that honored the dissonance i felt that was still so coherent. Thats a hard thing to find its a hard thing to achieve. Over the last six months of in teaching workshop in peoples living rooms. Teaching people how to build their bentos. I take them to the same process we went through and we have roleplaying where we model out making choices together. I asked people to write real life should i questions in their life, should i quit my job . Should i tell them what i really think . We answer their bento and then we let the bento speak and say what is the right choice for them and we almost always find this conflict between these voices which is of course why we have to ask this question in the first place. By adding all those things out there and seeing them you are empowered to make a self coherent decision and bring different parts of yourself together. I made a website called bento wisdom. Org that walks you through the whole process basically is an online version of the same workshop. It guides you through the process of building your bento its all very lowtech you can get a paper and write down on it with a pen. You are taught how to make questions with it. How to find the right sort of answer that really lives up to your values and who you are. What i think the bento really provides is self coherence. In all of our lives we have so many different roles we are consumers we are workers we are citizens we are spouses we are parents we are children. These different roles often cause us to self compromise. We make a good choice for our work selves thats bad for our family. We make a choice for consumer thats not in our self interest in another way. We just kind of swallow this and compartmentalize it. Because this is what the modern world seems to demand of us. Certainly some sort of compromise is always going to be a part of things but i believe the possibility for self coherent is really there but begins with seeing your full self interest not just what you already know. The power of this is bigger than just right now too. Lets imagine this is your bento, theres you in the bottom left. That top right corner is your child. Lets imagine your child grows up and lets make their bento, what you immediately see is the way that each generation influences the one that follows. Your values will have a direct influence on your child they form the foundation of who they are. Your relationship with your partner and the rest of your family and everyone else in your life, that shapes how they relate to the world too. It says your child will do for their child. Just as our parents have done for us. The values we live and hold are not just affecting right now, they are actually affecting generations to come because there is a process i call the value clecs where overtime our values will carry or die from one generation to the next. The degree which we consciously invest and think about these other spaces has the Material Impact on the world our children live in. This is a process that plays out over time. The way that it goes from 28 percent of College Students believing that being rich was essential to 82 percent believing that at about 50 years that is the process of the value helix. Each generation the culture changing and our way of seeing the world changing with it. This process also makes me feel very optimistic because in the same way our world is gradually shaped itself to where we are now, that means we also absolutely have the power to shape it somewhere else. This is not something that can be done immediately, its not something we will have a quick fix the instant gratification but its absolutely possible. Its just like turning left, you need a destination with going toward and the determination to get there. All these ideas come from this book this could be our future a manifesto for more generous world that makes this argument that the limitation of our world today is a very narrow way we see self interest and in a very narrow way we think about you. The greatest potential for future generations is expanding and working on those ideas. If you like to learn more about bentoism byou can go to entoism. Org. I like to close with a benediction to talks about the spirit ive been talking about this is a song by son rob the jazz artist. Its about 90 seconds, i would love for you to close your eyes and we can chat afterwards. Its not playing. [music] ladies and gentlemen, if anybody has any questions we have a microphone here in the aisle. If anyone would like to ask question, feel free to step up. Dont be shy and ask your question. Thank you. Hello, my name is aim here on behalf of the Wayne State University innovation studio and i just wanted to ask you what inspired you to pivot . What inspired you to lead kickstarter and all this things you were doing before . I stepped away as ceo of kickstarter a little over two years ago. It was not an easy decision or an easy process. But as the longer projects and companies go on the more they evolve. There was a point where i could feel that maybe the kind of leader that the company needed at that point or the space it was moving into may be somewhat different than me. It was difficult because as the ceo i argued for myself i wanted to make the case for that but as the cofounder i tried to think about where does kick starter ultimately need to become need to end up. So that was a decision made with the board and my cofounders only in retrospect that i realize how tired i become from doing a job like that for so long and found this purpose of talking about the ideas that i think really informing how kick starter operates and what motivated us to run it in the way that it continues to run. Just one of those lifes pivot points. My experience about every 12 years that happens you sorta hit the reset button and moves into something else. Now this is going to be working on the idea of expanding and shifting how we see value in selfinterest. Thank you for asking. Anyone else . Hello. I wanted to ask about things you are thinking about doing next with this bento moving forward making decisions in the future . Trying to teach as many workshops as i can. Because watching other people fill out their bentos and engage i learned so much every time. Like this is something i dreamed up and have used myself but seeing in the hands of others has been extremely rewarding and fascinating. Probably about 150 people have gone to this at some point. Im going to keep doing those workshops online wherever i travel and go. There is a larger project i imagine which i think will take decades trying to define new forms of value that basically how do we shift moral emotional values into more of the rational value space. Things we all know are important that we do a pretty good job of making decisions for and are personal life but collectively we struggle to think that way. Our made metric of progress today is gdp gross domestic progress which is counting something valuable if money is spent on it. It doesnt track how or why the money is spent. 1000 spent on divorce attorney and 1000 spent on Family Vacation are the same thing both of thousand dollars gdp. We are focused on the coastline growth. I imagine over time that our dashboard expands. Financial value will always be incredibly important in corbett that we will learn how to balance that with other forms of value. The best way for that to happen a real scale is not due trying to impose moral sense of value and other people who will have our values and those are nothing you can really change about another person nor should you want to. Instead its about how you make the argument that those values are actually critical and important in the right way to do things and to me a look at success as financial value is him as a role model. How do you turn more values into those kinds of metrics, those kind of universal guiding lights. Thats a process i think would keep getting the best out of humanity. Im an optimist about human beings for sure. Just wanted to hear a little bit more about the decisionmaking process of the bentoism. What do you find what youre doing the workshops people give different weight to each square and have you noticed any patterns with how that affects their decisions after they go through the whole box . Its like 100 some people have gone through it so the sample size is not enormous. I done different ages i did it for his school kids i did it for my parents who were not high school kids. One generalization that stands out is that for men doing the bento the idea that there is stuff beyond now me is eyeopening. I feel like i constantly see men being like, wow. I hadnt quite thought about that before. The recognition of the truth of it felt like more a feeling of surprise. What i find with the women who go through it is that it just orders the thoughts that are already happening. Thinking about the future, consequences, its like a very natural way that their mind operates. Grossly generalizing but for women its more like provided a framework to organize thoughts that are already happening. And let them be productive versus spinning circles around. Im still learning. One of the thing i found is for his school kids asking them about who their future me is really hard for them to answer. They dont know. Check something you discover with time. When i asked parents about my future me its also a hard question to answer because theyre thinking about mortality so its scary for another reason. I think some cultures are more individualistically oriented, other cultures are more collectively oriented. Probably their default place in the bento is different. We might be imagining people to default as now me but in many countries people default as now us and thinking about me is a harder thing to do. My feeling is these spaces are pretty universal we definitely all come at them in different ways. There is advantage to all of us to thinking about them to considering them because they really materially affect our lives. To have an awareness of that rather than just operating in a way thats pretty blind to me is just clearly a better way to go. Thanks for asking about that. Hi, my name is linda. I was wondering if you have some target groups you are approaching just in todays world is it regular people making decisions on in the world or Corporate Leaders or politicians . They could really use some of this. Where are you planning to go with it if youve only done 100 so far . M sorted three weeks into the book coming out, im going to start organization based on this like a Public Benefit corporation that will work with organizations to try to help them build bentos to help identify and measure values. That will also ideally giving grants into research and then definition of new values. Sort of a central hub for everyone trying to do this kind of work. I have a theory the kind of change im talking about x about 30 years. A generational change. 30 year increments roughly from one generation to annex. 30 years from now is 2050 and this is one millennials engines he will be fully in charge and every poll shows they have a different way of seeing the world than the generations before because what the world was like when they woke up here. Im arguing to them that there is tremendous opportunity to change the world if you have a plan. If you have a destination like its amazing how far you can go. The challenge in my generation me being 41 years old the generation x i was brought up believing the world was just set and working as it should. And that we could allow those things to be going that the institutions were safe and sound that it was okay for our generation to audition for the real world road rules challenge instead of trying to create value in some way in our communities. I think where we ended up is partially a sentiment of that. Im really trying to create a conversation with two generations i find very inspiring. To say lets have a plan lets start working on something and imagining that like we are going to be there a while from now. Its not instant but this is the kind of work that we are not just helping ourselves, we are helping every generation. Im imagining a world where its not to easy to make values driven choice but maybe its not difficult. Maybe saying its easy is setting too high a bar. To make choices that are in integrity with who they are and who they want to be. I think right now thats not easy to do. My goal is thats less difficult. My name is trevor. My question is similar to when asked a couple minutes ago about, i thought about the situation you said like should i do a talk with the company i dont agree with. The conflict is some yeses and some knows i was wondering how do you process those conflicts yourself . How do you help others process like how do you personally process through those kind of conflicts and how do you help others to do that as well . Its interesting. One thing ive learned to do is when there is a no, i like trying to see what im assuming, am i saying no because i think im going to do this in a certain way like is there anything i can unpack there . But when i do the workshops i will walk people through my bento and then i ask for volunteer and someone comes up sits with me on stage or on the couch and we have a whiteboard and i will ask them what is important to you are now me what do you need now and we write down all the answers. Then i say, okay, take out your should i questions i had you write when you first got here and pick one and lets ask your bento. At one of these events i did not long ago the woman that volunteered as a woman who ran like a small Creative Agency and the question she asked her bento was should i work with big clients who pay the bills or should i work with smaller clients i feel more aligned with on a values basis. Great question, lets ask your bento. Her now me which is about providing for her needs said work with the corporate client like i have responsibilities, her future me which thought about her values and wanted to be virtuous said you have to do the Smaller Company at the right thing to do but the most interesting thing to me about her bento was when we got to her now us, asked her whats the heart of your relationships . What do your friends, what are your family lean on you for . Who are you as a friend . She immediately was what, i am the truth teller. Im a friend that tells you what you need to know like i will tell you the hard truth i will do it in love but im the one who knows how to confront and tell people what they need to hear. When she asked the question about what to do we came to the now us voiced the truth teller i said heres your answer. Your answer is that you need to bring your truth telling self into these meetings with the big clients you should bring values who you really are what you think is important you should bring those to these pitch meetings with the big corporate clients you should be willing to strike out on four straight jobs because theyre not interested in what you are trying to do but maybe by the fifth time youve gotten the message right and you will find someone that really connects with it. That might end up being the most meaningful work you ever do. Its about bringing these other part of yourself i often find there are things like that that is sort of like over here you say you care about this that would seem to suggest this would be the more the right thing to do and those are the moments where it really clicks for people in the notion of coherence as possible like we all know when we are in line with ourselves and when we are not like when were in a flow state is what people call it. Articulating what that is is a lot more difficult. I think of the bento like a compass of what that is, it doesnt mean you always get there but it tells you what is closest to that for you. I think with more exposure and more pattern recognition maybe well have a better sense of when actually it wasnt always like this but as of right now still each one is a window into whats going on inside somebody. The important part of the bento is its not imposing any set of values at all. Its merely creating awareness. While creating this it occurred to me someone with whom i agree with everything politically could use the bento become better at everything i might oppose in certain ways. But actually thats right because any other answer than that would be a form of tyranny it would be me trying to impose a set of values on someone else which will is always unjust. Exposing us to whats really happening inside of us and letting the other voices which i think we all know them they all have different tones there is the saboteur voice theres all these things that speak to us how do you air them out and i think that is the path to coherence. We have time for one more question. Everybody can give a round of applause for yancey. Inc. You. Just so everybody knows, over to your left in the back he will be signing there is a table right next to made in america and i was informed to say any student to participate in the roundtable if they could head back to the drivein. Thank you again yancey if we could give him a round of applause one more time. Thank you so much. Plex yale history professor Joanne Freeman was a recent guest in our author calling program in depth, here she talks about americas founders and their desire to act differently from european monarchies. One of the wonderful things about studying and writing about the funding is to put all kinds of things in writing that you dont expect them to put in writing. John adams writing to a friend and saying how should an american politician dress . I dont i want to i dont want to look like those british or french european aristocrats, the clothing i have is from my years in europe had a lot of lace on it. Is it too much lace to be american . Should i strip some of the lace or washington . How many horses with the carriage would seem appropriately american versus how many begin to see the narc tickle which sounds really trivial and goofy and a part of white so much fun to teach but on the other hand, they are seriously thinking about the fact that those kinds of little seemingly stylistic decisions are really going to shape the tone and character of the government and the nation and when everything sets a precedent, that kind of improv can have a big impact. On the one hand its almost comical because it seems trivial. On the other hand, it really isnt trivial and that in and of itself is interesting. To watch this and previous episodes visit our website booktv. Org click on the indepth tab at the top of the page. For 40 years cspan has been providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the Supreme Court and Public Policy events from washington dc and around the country. You can make up your own mind, created by cable in 1979 cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan familiar unfiltered view of government. Line